A variety of drapery support systems have been devised in which an edge of the drapery fabric is engaged at spaced points which are drawn together to form pleats. These systems are easier to use in forming a drape than arrangements in which the drapery fabric is sewn together to form the pleats, and they simplify and lower the cost of laundering the drapes.
One popular form of pleat is termed a "roll pleat" in which the drapery forms a sinuous curve back and forth across the axis of the drapery rod. Previous devices for forming such pleats have employed tape sections joining the crests of adjacent pleats to maintain the pleat formation, as for example in U.S. Pat. No. 3,155,150; the provision of stiff, curved, header tapes for attachment to the top of the draperies, as in U.S. Pat. No. 4,053,009; the provision of separate carriers for each fold which support the folds normally to the axis of the curtain rod as in U.S. Pat. No. 1,239,919; or the provision of carriers having cylindrical sections which wrap around the head of the drape to force the drape into a circular form, as in U.S. Pat. No. 3,037,556.
These arrangements each suffer from some limitation, such as the difficulty of laundering the drapery, the artificial appearance of the pleat or the cost and complexity of the pleating device.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,827,656 discloses an arrangement wherein each independent carrier of the drapery system supports an elongated flexible strand or rigid U-shaped hook so that both of the free ends of the hook hang downwardly from the carrier. The ends of the hook are displaced by the carrier along the axis of the drapery rod. The free ends of the hook are sewn to displaced points on the upper edge of the drapery so that a roll pleat is formed by the section of drapery between the points. This arrangement, and the variations thereon illustrated in that patent, do not provide a rigid support for the drapery fabric which forces it to extend normally to the axis of the rod and require that connector members be sewn to the fabric of the drapery rendering it difficult to launder.